Retail sales in Brazil rose 0.4 percent month-over-month in January 2019, recovering from a downwardly revised 2.1 percent fall in the previous month and beating market expectations of a 0.2 percent gain. Sales rebounded for office equipment, computer & communication (8.2 percent from -6.5 percent in December); other articles for personal & domestic use (7.2 percent from -14.2 percent); hypermarkets, supermarkets, food products, beverages & tobacco (0.6 percent from -0.3 percent); furniture & household appliances (0.4 percent from -4.9 percent); and fabrics, clothing & footwear (0.1 percent from -3.8 percent). On the other hand, sales of pharmaceutical & cosmetics articles dropped (-0.5 percent from 0.3 percent) and sales growth slowed for fuels & lubricants (0.5 percent from 1.4 percent) and books, newspapers, magazines & stationery (0.2 percent from 4.9 percent). Year-on-year, retail trade went up 1.9 percent, following a 0.6 percent gain in the prior month. Retail Sales MoM in Brazil averaged 0.29 percent from 2000 until 2019, reaching an all time high of 4 percent in January of 2017 and a record low of -2.60 percent in January of 2016.
Retail Sales MoM in Brazil is expected to be 0.60 percent by the end of this quarter, according to Trading Economics global macro models and analysts expectations. Looking forward, we estimate Retail Sales MoM in Brazil to stand at 0.70 in 12 months time. In the long-term, the Brazil Retail Sales MoM is projected to trend around 1.00 percent in 2020, according to our econometric models.